This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Ophthalmic surgery often involves cutting away or emulsifying tissues that need to be removed from the eye, such as in cataract surgery. Surgery is performed using a phacoemulsification handpiece having a needle with a cutter at its distal end and is inserted into the eye through an incision. The cutting tip of the needle oscillates to establish a cutting action for fragmentation of tissue. The oscillating nature of the needle also induces cavitation near the tip of the needle. For efficiency reasons, commercially available phaco-emulsification handpieces are designed to operate at a single fixed resonant frequency, which is based on the geometry of the phacoemulsification handpiece. Thus, each handpiece design has a single oscillation frequency and a fixed degree of cavitation-induced emulsification associated with the fixed resonant frequency.